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I remember when the Democrats were telling us gun nuts during the election earlier this year that we were being irrational in our fears that this president would be coming for our guns, because he hadn’t up until now. ABC News reports that they’ve gotten a bit more specific on the kinds of gun laws they’d like to see;

The White House today indicated President Obama would support legislation that would reinstate the ban on certain types of semi-automatic rifles – known as “the assault weapons ban” — and may support other efforts, such as a proposal to ban high-capacity magazines, in the wake of the deadly massacre in Newtown, Conn.

“He is actively supportive of, for example, Senator Feinstein’s stated intent to revive a piece of legislation that would reinstate the assault weapons ban,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters, publicly backing for the first time legislation Feinstein plans to introduce. The White House had previously been reluctant to publicly named any specific action it might support in an effort to prevent future massacres.

“Certain types of semi-automatic weapons” means that they don’t know what they’re talking about. They plan on going back to banning the sales of scary-looking black rifles with bayonet lugs and flash suppressors – which has nothing to do with the lethality of the weapons, but everything to do feelings of fear. It certainly won’t “prevent future massacres”.

They don’t need to ban high capacity magazines – I spent three hours last night looking for magazines. Cheaper Than Dirt and Amazon have apparently quit selling them, while everyone else is just out of them. Everyone is back ordered on 5.56mm ammo, too, well, except tracer ammo.

The article goes on to say that the president wants to “close the gun show loophole”. I don’t know what that means – I’ve bought two guns at gunshows in the last few years and both times I had to go through the same background checks I would in a store.

The president says that he reached out to my Senator, Joe Manchin for advice. Funny, but I tried to reach out to Manchin yesterday, too, but I went straight to voice mail.

ADDED: NBC broadcast new is reporting that Joe Bite-Me will be spearheading the anti-gun legislation, you know like he spearheaded the strategy in Afghanistan, so we’re boned.

Bottom line, rage in the mentally ill isn’t exactly something that’s going to stop on a dime. If someone in Lanza’s state of mind is hell-bent on getting a weapon and using it to shoot up a school, etc., chances are he’s not going to stop until he gets one, or something equally nasty.

I struggle with the inconsistency of the outrage. I don’t mind background checks and what-not, so long as at the end of the day I can still buy what I want in accordance with the right. I saw it in a liberal-minded religious committee meeting the other night, which I was heartened went in the direction of “what can we do to help with mental health?” We have a lot of domain knowledge on hand in our religious institution. The visceral reaction to guns by people with limited exposure to them was determined to be unhelpful, when even they admit that there was no law anyone was speaking of that could help.

I am happy that there are some thinking liberals out there on this matter. They acknowledged that the only distinction between a month in Philly and that day in Connecticut is the time frame it takes to generate that number of deaths, and they don’t feel the same sense of actionable outrage when it’s inner city violence. I was glad for the realization that there is a a lot of room for hypocrisy. Why not attack the truly illegal gun market in the demographics most afflicted by gun violence by shoring up the ATF or law enforcement? Apparently, in those cases, it’s still all our collective fault for allowing them to be poor and uneducated, which is why they shoot each other.

So if we attack the underlying causes of gun violence in inner cities, why do they want to attack a non-underlying cause of the violence in Newtown? I’m quite sure it’s because it defies any narrative where they get to blame law abiding members of the working class and afflict them with the consequences of irrelevant laws.

A question for the anti gunners. What is your acceptable single incident bag limit on children? How many have to die, at one time, in a preventable manner, before you start calling for a ban on the cause of death?

Joe, my question has to do with preventing street violence in the mentally ill. To do that, they have to be diagnosed, and often, involuntarily committed. Would you be willing to see the rights of the mentally ill “infringed” for the sake of public safety?

@48 Joe:
Reports state that the shooter initially attempted to buy a “long gun” from a gun store but didn’t want to wait the 14 days for the store to process the background check, so he pretty much said screw it. So the gun control system did work. And yet he found another place to acquire the weapons. It wasn’t about easy access vs. not easy access, it was about the will and motivation to kill. This was a disturbed young man who was convinced that going out that way was what he wanted, so he found a way to do it. You can’t legislate that into submission.

I have made this point to anti-gunners several times before, and I have yet to hear a rational response, so let’s see if Joe has anything to offer. Consider that there are tens of thousands of scary looking “assault weapons” already in the homes of tens of thousands of Americans. And the numbers will only increase between now and when the Scary Looking Guns Ban will take effect. What is your plan to take care of that? Remember, every scary looking gun that is already legally purchased and owned is grandfathered in, all the Scary Looking Guns Ban will do is limit future legal sale of them. Here’s a hint: I’m trying to bait you into admitting that you are ok with violating multiple Amendments in the Bill of Rights. Make me proud Joe!

Thanks JOhn G, I asked thesame question a few days ago and was met with outrage that I was exploiting little kids. It is a perfectly reasonable question. What is the break even point. At what point does the 2nd cost more than its worth?

Pinto, Sparkster, Cannoncocker, here’s another scenario: he couldn’t buy a gun, his mom didn’t have any, and he cooled off, either by himself or with professional help, and the entire event never occurred.

And, Cannoncocker, I have no problem repealing the 2nd and starting from scratch. Massive gun buyback a la Australia. That would get a bunch of guns off the street, and more importantly, get the most accessible guns off the street. Since the Australian slaughter of what, 1996, when the implemented buybacks and other measures, they haven’t had one mass slaughter. Compare that to our record.

You also never answered JohnG’s question, Joe. He deserves an answer too. What is the acceptable single-incident limit you’re willing to accept? If it’s zero, go ahead and say so. Then tell us exactly how you propose to “make it so”.

NHSparky: come on, fella – everybody knows guns are the only way mass murders ever kill people. Someone would never use a truck, fertilizer, and diesel fuel to kill a bunch of people.

Yes, every year, the city of Chicago has a gun turn-in event. You get something in exchange for your weapon(s). This year, the something-in-exchange ran out before all the weapons were redeemed, so those who brought in guns in exchange for something went home empty handed.

There are still drive-by and drive-up shootings, there are still gangs with guns, there are still shootings at parties and now basketball games, there are still holdups in banks and grocery stores and convenient stores.

And to make it CRYSTAL CLEAR, that’s entirely related to Chicago, not including the surrouding communities. Maybe I should bring Maywood into the mix. Or North Chicago. Or Evanston. Or Homewood. I could go on forever.

Yeah Pinto, if Adam Lanza couldn’t lay his hands on a high powered semi-automatic rifle, he could have just hijacked a jet plane and crashed it into the elementary school. So why even bother regulating guns?

Joe:”…he couldn’t buy a gun, his mom didn’t have any, and he cooled off, either by himself or with professional help, and the entire event never occurred.”

That’s not an answer. That’s a dream world “what if” scenario. I’m looking for a real answer. As of right now, what is your plan of action? I know that you are ok with repealing the 2nd Amendment, I get that, most of the gun-grabbers are. The 2nd Amendment is apparently the only one you actually know. I mean violating MULTIPLE Amendments. The 4th, for example, of another one you need to willingly violate. What is the PLAN to get all of those scary looking guns out of American homes? Answer please. No what ifs, no hindsight, no dream world scenarios.

Repeal/rewrite the 2nd, big gun buy back spending millions and millions of dollars, phase in laws disallowing the transfer of guns, ban specific types of ammo, and maybe even make certain existing weapons illegal (yeah, I know, cold, dead fingers and all that). We might all be dead of old age before it pays dividends, but just as people looking over the rim of the Yellowstone River thank the visionarys who took the initiative to start the National Park Service 90+ years ago, people reading about Sandy Hook in 2108 will thank the people who forced thru rational gun laws.

Another concept that I’m hearing from people who want to do away with the 2nd Amendment is the argument that they meant muskets and militias, not the weapons of today.

If they are, in this instance, so concerned with Framer’s Intent, why do they allow the even more obviously “antiquated” 3rd Amendment to figure so prominently into the very privacy rulings that run cover for the nuts like Lanza? Sheesh, protection from quartered troops tangentially implies a right to privacy? Hey, I’ll take it, but we have bigger leaps in legal logic in play in this country than going from the right to bear arms to the kinds of arms we bear.

Further, these massacres and the fill-a-hanky legislative response we see are not the norm, and yet, they’re the gun violence we’ll overreact to and legislate to. If Biden comes back from his gun violence study and says anything other than, “hey, we need to enforce existing laws in the areas where real gun violence really hits us daily”, then we know it’s a sham. If these massacres didn’t have such high levels of preventable urban gun violence behind them, the uninformed would understand why we shouldn’t seek feel-good legislative cure-alls.

Joe, take it from the gun owners on this site (who you so cavalierly want to have declared criminals) — the paternal “kindness” of the government is NEVER anything you want to depend on. If the Second Amendment dies, the First goes on the Critical Care list. Instantly. And the rest of them will be DOA shortly thereafter.

I, personally, will not be parting with any of my personal property. I’m sure thousands of Americans feel the same way.

Look up the Amendment process. Unfortunately for you, it’s not very easy to Amend the Constitution. Go ahead and give it a try though.

Meanwhile, what do you plan to do about the impending problem of poor access to mental health facilities for those who need it? The problem of mentally unstable people going nuts doesn’t go away with gun buyback programs. And that’s one of my points: anyone who thinks that there is any one solution to the problem, particularly if it’s in the form of gun control, is a complete fool. You never even thought about what we do with mentally unstable people have you?

A few years ago a disturbed individual near me took out his frustrations by driving his car into a preschool playground. He killed two and critically injured another three. It could have been worse. Every week I see a hand holding crocodile of happy little kids from the elementary school walking up the road to whatever little field trip they are on. The guy at the preschool couldn’t get much speed up. If he had seen the elementary kids on the open road??

I take everything you guys say with a grain of salt, because I know you start with the end point (I, repeat I, need all these guns, and under no circumstances will I, repeat I, allow them to be taKen away.I,me,mine)), which has nothing to do with promoting a civil, safe society, and then work backwards, the logic getting more and more contorted every day. I wonder if any of you has really looked at the pictures of every single one of those little kids ( I can’t look without shedding tears) and thought, “Too bad, there’s nothing we can do”. Cold.

“I wonder if any of you has really looked at the pictures of every single one of those little kids (I can’t look without shedding tears).” And yet you use their deaths to push your own beliefs on others every chance you get, like most of you twits started to do before their bodies were even cold. You really are a pure piece of shit.

Becoming emotional and jumping to irrational conclusions based on that emotion is a common MO for liberals.

I too, take everything you say with a grain of salt Joe, because I have seen that you are emotionally immature and not capable of interacting adults who disagree with you in a professional and respectful manner. In post #69, you twisted my S/N into cannonfodder, obviously intending to insult me. That is unprofessional and rude. I noticed in another thread that you threatened one member of this message board by telling them that you were going to shove their Bushmaster up their ass. So you can understand when I tell you that you need to grow up Joe. I’m glad that you are not a gun owner, you clearly are not mature enough to handle adult responsibilities.

Joe, I would rather start by controlling the mentally ill, than controlling guns. Most of the guns in this country are owned by law abiding citizens. Most of the people you talk with on here own guns. Why go after the people who aren’t causing problems while ignoring the ones who are?

And you know better about those children. Most of the people on here have children, too. Tears all around this nation have been shed for those children, and the people on this blog are no exception to that, either. You do us a disservice when you claim we’re inhuman.

Joe, if you want to look at pictures, look for all the kids killed by drivers distracted by cell phones. I can think of three recently, in one school district, in one town. What the numbers are nationally I hate to think. Two were killed by a mom who had dropped her own kids off and then blazed through a crosswalk. Another was killed by a man texting a drug buy when he lost control of his truck. No one needs a cell phone. They are a mere convenience. The laws against using them while driving don’t work and I would have no problem banning them entirely. Think of the lives that would be saved.

#82 That’s the whole problem with liberal logic (or lack thereof). Passing legislation on inanimate objects, because it sounds good, and it’s easy. Instead they should be going for the root of the problem, and that sure as shit is NOT an inanimate object.

I was pretty sure Joe wouldn’t have the balls to live up to his convictions. And based on his screed in comment 77, I’m guessing he has issues with the concept of private property, too.

Maybe we were wrong to suggest he move to Europe. Perhaps Cuba or North Korea would be more to his liking. And both of them have plenty of mountains – which means plenty of rocks to climb, too! So long as the government lets him, of course.

Oh, and Joe? I know it’s a hard concept for you to grasp – but some people who don’t even own a gun support the 2nd Amendment. Really. Why don’t you ask Ex-PH2 how many guns she owns?

That’s right Joe: I, I, I, me, me, me. I, the individual, have certain defined rights and freedoms, one of which is the right to keep and bear arms which I will zealously defend. Society? That seems to be whatever you nasty collectivists deem it to be in order to usurp the rights of individuals and consolidate your grip on power.

I’ll make it short and sweet for you Joe-will I accept the repeal of the 2nd amendment? FYNQ!

I’ll go you one better, JohnG. The OKC bombing was done with a rented truck, fertilizer, and diesel fuel. No one needs those; they’re all mere conveniences too (you can always hire someone to move your stuff, hire a lawn service, or drive an electric vehicle or ride a bike). So using Joe’s logic, we should ban rental trucks, fertilizer, and diesel fuel – because we don’t really need those and someone has used them to do evil things in the past.

Yes, I’m being sarcastic as hell. But that’s exactly the logic Joe and his fellow anti-gun/repeal the 2nd Amendment “useful idiots” are espousing: because someone, somewhere, used a tool to do evil, we must confiscate the tool.

Sorry to the normal folks on this site for my statements #88. I just got off of the phone with another of these idiots and it fed over to this forum. I will take care of the other idiot later this evening, a good face to face conversation, I believe.

PintoNag: Joe’s OK with using dead children to score political points – in fact, that’s exactly what he’s doing in comment 77 above. Doing that is crass, cold, calculating, and despicable – not empathetic. What makes you think he gives a damn about offending anyone who disagrees with him?

If you really want to ensure childrens safety have a team of 3 to 4 guards manning the entry points of every school.. Not enough man power you say? How many veterans are in need of jobs right now? Pay them 12 to 15 dollars an hour to do this and they don’t even have to be armed, although I would prefer them to be.

Of course the left would never allow this because we can’t have crazy veterans near our children and the right would never allow it because it would be to expensive and the teachers unions would never allow it because the money used for that may take away from their bonuses and pay raises..

And I am not talking about hiring some 60 year old who is overweight to do these jobs.. I am talking PT standards and younger people who will take it seriously who are either veterans, retired military or law enforcement.. Pass a somewhat challenging PT test and psych eval.

RUSH: actually, the idea has merit. And if you used 3-4 folks per school part time, it might not be as expensive as you think. IMO one or two armed guards at a school would deter 90+% of the crazies, if not 99+%.

Of course, you’re correct that the NEA and other teacher’s unions would never go for that. They’re all about the kids – until it starts to affect their pay and benefits.

Rush, I think you have something there. I know of a few that would do it for free, even if unarmed. If nothing else, they would sacrifice themselves as an early warning to the teachers and students and probably would still take out the perpetrator. I do not think Joe is cut of the same material though.

I know I would gladly serve in that capacity, lord knows I signed up for the same type service for 20 plus years in the Army.

I think if such a program ever got off the ground it should target newly seperated veterans, so it could almost kill 2 birds with one stone.. easing the veteran unemployment rate and keeping schools safe..

But it would undoubtedly turn into cops or other people who already have a job doing it for beer money with how corrupt local school boards are.

RUSH: I’m curious. Why do you see allowing school staff to be armed as a bad idea? Had the principal or someone in the front office been armed in CT, the shooter would very likely not have had the chance to harm even one child.

Note that I’m not talking about making it compulsory. But I think optionally allowing it provided certain conditions are met (CC permit, firearms training, mandatory periodic refresher training) is definitely worth considering. Under those conditions, I don’t see that as any better or worse than having an armed security guard at the door with another roaming the halls.

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About thisainthell

We are all military combat veterans and we write primarily from that perspective. Everyone who writes here has a Combat Infantry Badge, a Combat Medic Badge, a Combat Action Badge or a Combat Action Ribbon. We write about issues that matter to combat veterans..read more »